Things do not end well when Chancelors denounce the presence of “foreigners” in German society

Via CS Monitor:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a gathering of young members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party this weekend that the “multikulti” concept – where people of different backgrounds would live together happily – does not work in Germany.

At “the beginning of the 1960s our country called the foreign workers to come to Germany and now they live in our country,” said Ms. Merkel at the event in Potsdam, near Berlin. “We kidded ourselves a while. We said: ‘They won’t stay, [after some time] they will be gone,’ but this isn’t reality. And of course, the approach [to build] a multicultural [society] and to live side by side and to enjoy each other … has failed, utterly failed.”

The crowd gathered in Potsdam greeted the above remark, delivered from the podium with fervor by Ms. Merkel, with a standing ovation. And her comments come just days after a study by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation think tank (which is affiliated with the center-left Social Democratic Party) found that more than 30 percent of people believed Germany was “overrun by foreigners” who had come to Germany chiefly for its social benefits.

Even more terrifying:

The study also found that 13 percent of Germans would welcome a “Führer” – a German word for leader that is explicitly associated with Adolf Hitler – to run the country “with a firm hand.” Some 60 percent of Germans would “restrict the practice of Islam,” and 17 percent think Jews have “too much influence,” according to the study.

In between France’s expulsion of tens of thousands of Roma immigrants and the assimilation of would-be book-banner Geer Wilders and other nationalist politicians into the mainstream of European politics, one is faced with a sobering picture of Europe. The continent of the Enlightenment still dreams in unreason. It falls to us to confront their monsters, leading by humane example.

“Where’s the birth certificate?”

To some border authorities, the answer is, “Who cares?”

Florida is the new Arizona

FL Attorney General Bill McCollum unveiled a law that would require all immigrants–legal and illegal–to carry documentation at all times, or else face 20 days in jail, and would allow judges to mandate stiffer penalties for illegal immigrants who commit the same crimes as legal residents.

Fed. judge blocks part of AZ immigration bill, claims encroachment on fed. laws, “extraordinary” burden on immigrants

Via the NY Times:

In a ruling on a law that has rocked politics coast to coast and thrown a spotlight on the border state’s fierce debate over immigration, United States District Court Judge Susan Bolton in Phoenix said some aspects of the law can go into effect as scheduled on Thursday. But Judge Bolton took aim at the parts of the law that have generated the most controversy, issuing a preliminary injunction against sections that called for officers to check a person’s immigration status while enforcing other laws and that required immigrants to carry their papers at all times. Judge Bolton put those sections on hold while she continues to hear the larger issues in the challenges to the law. “Preserving the status quo through a preliminary injunction is less harmful than allowing state laws that are likely preempted by federal law to be enforced,” she said. “There is a substantial likelihood that officers will wrongfully arrest legal resident aliens,” she wrote. “By enforcing this statute, Arizona would impose a ‘distinct, unusual and extraordinary’ burden on legal resident aliens that only the federal government has the authority to impose.”

Federal judge overturns AZ ban on partner benefits for LGBT state-employees

Via Lamda Legal:

U.S. District Court Judge John W. Sedwick today granted Lambda Legal’s request for a preliminary injunction blocking the elimination of domestic partner benefits for gay and lesbian Arizona State employees. The judge also substantially denied a motion to dismiss the case by State’s Attorney Charles Grube, ordering that the case proceed on the merits. Lambda Legal represents ten state employees—including from the Arizona Highway Patrol, the State Department of Game and Fish, and state universities—who rely on health benefits from their employers to safeguard their families’ health, as heterosexual workers do.Sedwick’s ruling rejects claims by the state that the elimination of benefits will not harm the families of gay and lesbian employees because they may still be able to obtain insurance privately, through Medicaid or via the employers of the non-public employee partner. “Even assuming that is true,” Sedwick writes, citing a 9th Circuit Court ruling in Lambda Legal’s ongoing case In re Golinski, “the Ninth Circuit has recognized there is ‘an inherent inequality‘ in allowing some employees to participate fully in the State’s health plan, while expecting other employees to rely on other sources, such as private insurance or Medicaid. This ‘back of the bus‘ treatment relegates plaintiffs to a second-class status by imposing inferior workplace treatment on them, inflicting serious constitutional and dignitary harms that after-the-fact damages cannot adequately address.”

…

Sedwick also rejected the State’s claims that maintaining the same benefits for gay employees that their heterosexual co-workers will continue to receive would endanger other state services: “The State’s argument, which is not supported by any evidence, is speculative at best and discriminatory at worst. Contrary to the State’s suggestion, it is not equitable to lay the burden of the State’s budgetary shortfall on homosexual employees, any more than on any other distinct class, such as employees with green eyes or red hair.”

Writing same-sex couples out of state benefits programs was Gov. Jan Brewer’s very first act of office after being sworn in in 2009; might her other legacy have the same fate.

Five miles of protesters

Protesting what? What else.